Git ignore is not ignoring the netbeans private files

Question

When ever I do git status, the netbeans private.xml is making trouble, I tried adding that in git ignore several ways. but the gitignore simply does not ignore it.

Answer 1

A file which is already tracked would not be ignored: you need to remove from the index first.

git rm --cached private.xml 
git add -u .
git commit -m "Record deletion of private.xml from the index"

(the --cached option make sure the file remains on the disk)

Then you can add it in the .gitignore (no need for '*')

private.xml 

Note: whenever an file is or is not ignored, you can check out which .gitignore rule applies with:

git check-ignore -v -- private.xml